Month: June 2011

A couple of days ago I posted about how the first stage of RIFT’s new world event seemed a little… lackluster, I guess. But just as soon as I got used to the new routine of dailies, the second staged kicked in, and now I’m starting to feel it. Some of the old (easy) dailies have been rotated out, and a bunch of new ones are now active — quests which require you to do a lot more: grouping, rift closing, and even seeking out Hammerknell to view a looping real-world cinematic. It’s sort of like a play that keeps repeating upon request, but I’m not knocking it too much because it truly is neat and I liked it well enough.

But my favorite thing is that you can see a lot of little details about the world changing, particularly in the main cities. It’s like everything is leaking and drowning, and even inside the main Sanctum hall the ceiling is dripping water. It gives a good sense of immediacy, that there’s something amiss and you want to get out there and fix it.

I just hope phase three holds off until I come back next weekend — I really want to experience all of this!

“Sony has told you guys that you are not going to win this. There’s no question, there’s no last-ditch rally to save the beach from Evil Mr. Shutdownington or whatever. Sony stepped up and said ‘guys, the petition thing, it’s sweet, but it is also totally pointless.’ And yet the desperate requests to spread the word continue, as if somehow if you just got enough signatures it would somehow alter the space-time continuum and the companies would change their minds.”

Tiny Tower for the iOS is the first FarmVille-style game I’ve ever seen the point in playing, and even now I’m debating its merits as a “game” versus an “addictive as crap timesink.” What I do know is that there’s a lot of excellent points that elevates this title above the stupider elements of FarmVille, and it’s charmed me enough that I’ve played it for quite a few days now.

Utilizing the iPhone screen perfectly, Tiny Tower lets you create a skyrise one floor at a time. Floors can either hold apartments (that can house up to five “Bitizens”) or one of five types of stores (with over 80 stores and services in all). Apartments house the workers that work the stores, stores sell goods to make money, money lets you build more. Special currency — Tower Bux — let you upgrade your elevator (which is important to earning more money and bux), speed up restocking, and do a number of other convenient things. The game’s pretty good at letting you earn Bux for free, although there’s the option to pay real money for it too.

That’s the basics, although there’s considerably more than that. Floors can be repainted, Bitizens remodeled, VIPs ferried to specific destinations to give you a huge boost, and a “Where’s Waldo” game occasionally appears and tasks you with finding a specific Bitizen in exchange for a Bux.

Tiny Tower’s become insanely popular in the week or so since its release, and I can see why. It’s less intrusive than FarmVille (for example, your restocking efforts never degrade, so you don’t HAVE to get back until you’re ready) and it nurtures that building part of us that likes to make bigger and better dollhouses. But the real star of the show is the truly awesome pixel art — each floor (and Bitizen) is charmingly rendered in an old-school pixelated format, but it’s still clear enough so that you can make out all sorts of details.

I do appreciate that there’s some element of strategy and gaming here, although the game does lack specific goals — it’s just “build as high as you want, whatever.” There’s no reward for having a 50-story skyscraper over a 5-story one, unless you consider the reveal of new types of floors a reward (to the game’s credit, it never repeats floors on you if it can help it). There’s almost always something to do when you do log in, so you’re not just sitting around waiting for timers to count down, either.

However, in my few days of playing it, I’ve come up with a wish list of how this game could be made way, way better, including:

Having the Bitizens DO something other than just mill about. They don’t talk, or interact with the environment or each other. The in-app “BitBook” is a nice touch, but it’s not something you see from the main screen.

Have the store and apartments animated. It’d be really neat to see coffee being brewed or someone taking a nap on a sofa.

Be able to customize and upgrade floors beyond just random repainting

Be able to specifically outfit Bitizens instead of just hitting a randomizer

Be able to unclick VIPs in elevators so that you can wait to use them instead of being forced to use them right then and there

Anyway, big thumbs-up to this title — it’s on my iPhone to stay, and for a free game, I’m pleased that it doesn’t really push its microtransactions on me.

Right now RIFT is in the first of an eventual five-stage world event titled “Waves of Madness,” but so far it doesn’t feel “mad” so much as “oh hey, there’s a couple new dailies to do!”

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some dailies that have interesting mechanics (I’m particularly fond of the quest where you run around the city exposing spies and killing them) and let you save up for nice rewards, but I think Trion’s being a little too subtle while ramping up to these world events. The problem is that when people anticipate them, they want something great right off the bat — none of this “prologue” stuff. The result is that you get a lot of whiners who aren’t happy with the less-than-thrilling intro, and we all know how hard it is to coach patience to MMO players.

So it’d be much better if there was an actual event to kick off the world event, something noticeable and interactive that would serve to draw players in and have them begging for more versus doing their dailies while impatiently tapping a toe waiting for the circus to arrive.

That said, it looks like Waves of Madness will be a lot bigger than the faulty River of Souls, and I know there’s a lot of eyes on Trion to see if their course corrections from the first world event will result in a much-improved experience or not. The dailies so far are okay, and I like the fact that one of them is to bless a wardstone, which not only gets us familiar with the blessing skill (if we haven’t used it before) but gives us added incentive to do a rift in order to get a planar charge.

The rewards are attractive, I’ll admit. Some nice necklaces that have water-breathing on top of decent stats, a few pets (I’ve already got the crab… yes, I’ve got crabs), cosmetic armor, and other miscellaneous goodies. I do hope we plow into Phase 2 before too long here, because I’m eager to see what comes next.

As for my character, right now I’m mostly running a Bladedancer build on my Rogue and loving it even more than Saboteur (if that’s possible). It’s a really fun soul to use, since you’re firing off tons of instant attacks and dodging damage left and right. I love the charge ability and usually jump up in the air, hit it, and “fly” to hit my foe. There’s also a wicked awesome AoE barrage attack you can do which is almost always an “I win” button if your foes are at level or below.

That’s about it for RIFT right now. I’m only a few days away from our annual mission trip, which means that planning and preparation have taken over my life, so don’t expect TOO many articles on Bio Break this week. We do have an excellent roster of guest bloggers lined up for next week’s blogathon, so there’s a lot to look forward to!

I pride myself on not stooping to take part in every obvious marketing scheme known to man, but I’m going to make an exception today because I really, really want that stupid yapping dog pet in RIFT. And that means that I need a friend.

Are you my friend? A friend loaded with spare money and curious enough to try RIFT out for a month?